Being Willing to Break the Rules

Have you ever had the experience that staff members will fail to follow the rules over and over again, except for the one time that you didn’t want them to follow the rules because the rules were obviously wrong? It’s a repetitive pattern that…well, to be blunt, makes me crazy! Policies adhered to for the sake of rule-following frequently punish innocent customers who weren’t up to speed on our systems. So, while we certainly want our staff to adhere to our “rules,” we also want them to think for themselves, to make decisions in the context of the Business Perspective Chart, and to understand and act on the reality that sometimes we have to break the rules or ignore the systems in the interest of taking care of our customers.

One way we work to combat this is to remind everyone who works here that our systems and rules are only set up to help to effectively get great service to our customers. And that when they need to, we want our staff to break the rules in order to give better service. With this in mind, we specifically address this in our Guiding Principles by saying that, “We understand that our actions have an impact on our customers. We retain the flexibility to make exceptions to our rules when it is in the best interests of our guests to do so. We do not hold our guests responsible for not being familiar with our systems.”

What that means in practice is that we specifically ask our staff to be ready to break the rules in order to give better service to customers. We know that there are exceptions to every rule, and the last thing we want to do is handle our customers based on the law of averages. To the contrary, every customer wants special service. In fact, we specifically ask staffers here to find a way to “Just say yes!” to customers if there’s any way we can possibly meet their needs (think out of the box here).

What does this look like in practice?

We have one customer who comes into the Deli every Saturday. He’s not the easiest guy in the world to deal with. He has very good taste and very high standards, and he’s very particular about what he wants—or doesn’t want—on any given day. Often, what he’s in the mood for isn’t on the menu. But instead of reading him the rules, we’ve adjusted the rules to fit his needs. Only a manager takes his order. A manager or a supervisor always prepares it. As a result, he’s been coming back Saturday after Saturday for probably 15 years now. And because he’s very vocal about his feelings, I know that he’s out in the community telling people why they too should come and experience Zingerman’s.